Head of Talent

Rhoda; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 380,000; Full time

Job summary

Rhoda AI is seeking a Head of Talent to lead company-wide recruiting and develop the team that enables Rhoda’s next growth phase. You will partner with the founders and functional leaders to set hiring priorities, attract exceptional people, and turn recruiting into a lasting competitive advantage.

This hands-on leadership role requires building a high-performing talent function, developing sourcing capabilities, and establishing scalable processes that move quickly without compromising our

Qualifications

• 8+ years of recruiting experience, including leadership of a talent function at a high-growth tech company.
• Strong track record of sourcing and closing senior technical talent in competitive markets.
• Experience building recruiting teams and aligning sourcing, full-cycle recruiting, and recruiting operations.

Responsibilities

• Own recruiting strategy and execution across all functions, translating priorities into hiring plans.
• Lead critical technical and leadership searches end-to-end and close offers.
• Build and develop a high-performing talent team; establish internal sourcing capabilities.
• Create efficient recruiting processes, systems, and reporting to identify bottlenecks and improve performance.
• Shape candidate experience and employer brand through collaboration with Research, Engineering, and Marketing.

Skills

Leading recruiting

Sourcing talent

Communication skills

Negotiation

Relationship building

Operational judgment

Hands-on recruiting

AI tech recruiting

Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We’re looking for a Head of Talent to lead company-wide recruiting and build the team and capabilities that will support Rhoda’s next stage of growth. You’ll partner closely with our founders and functional leaders to identify hiring priorities, attract exceptional people, and turn recruiting into a lasting competitive advantage.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll personally drive our most important searches while building a strong internal recruiting team, developing sourcing capabilities, and establishing processes that help us move quickly without compromising our hiring bar.

What You’ll Do

Talent Strategy & Leadership

• Own recruiting strategy and execution across AI research, software, hardware, operations, and business functions, translating company priorities into clear hiring plans.
• Partner with leadership and Finance on headcount planning, recruiting budgets, and resource allocation, bringing market insight and sound judgment to decisions about where and how to hire.

Hands-On Recruiting & Closing

• Personally lead critical technical and leadership searches, from defining the role and mapping the market to building candidate relationships and closing offers.
• Work closely with hiring managers to communicate the opportunity, understand candidate motivations, and develop thoughtful closing strategies in highly competitive markets.

Team Building & Sourcing

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing talent team across sourcing, recruiting, and recruiting operations, adding capacity thoughtfully as the company grows.
• Establish strong internal sourcing capabilities through targeted outreach, referrals, research communities, and long-term relationships. Use external search partners selectively, with clear accountability for quality, results, and cost.

Recruiting Operations & Hiring Quality

• Build consistent, efficient hiring processes, including role intake, interview design, evaluation criteria, interviewer training, timely decisions, and offer approvals.
• Own recruiting systems, workflows, and reporting. Use funnel conversion, time in stage, offer acceptance, source effectiveness, and hiring outcomes to identify bottlenecks and improve performance.

Candidate Experience & Employer Brand

• Set a high standard for candidate experience, ensuring clear communication, thoughtful engagement, and a well-coordinated process from first contact through the transition to onboarding.
• Partner with Research, Engineering, and Marketing to communicate what makes Rhoda distinctive and build lasting relationships with the communities we hire from.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of recruiting experience, including experience leading a talent function or recruiting team at a high-growth technology company.
• A strong track record of personally sourcing and closing exceptional technical talent, including senior individual contributors and leaders in competitive markets.
• Experience building and developing recruiting teams, with a clear understanding of how sourcing, full-cycle recruiting, and recruiting operations work together.
• The ability to partner credibly with founders and technical leaders, translate ambiguous needs into well-defined searches, and challenge assumptions constructively.
• Strong operational judgment: you know how to build structure and accountability without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Excellent communication, relationship-building, and negotiation skills, with the discretion to handle sensitive candidate and business information.
• A hands-on approach and a strong sense of ownership. You’re equally comfortable developing a hiring strategy, reaching out to a hard-to-reach candidate, and resolving a process bottleneck.

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

• Experience recruiting for AI research, robotics, advanced hardware, or other deeply technical organizations, with established relationships in relevant talent communities.
• Experience scaling an internal recruiting function through a significant stage of company growth and improving the balance between direct sourcing and agency support.
• Familiarity with Ashby or similar recruiting platforms, recruiting analytics, and practical workflow automation.

Why This Role

• Help build the team that turns advances in AI and robotics into systems that work in the real world.
• Work directly with founders and technical leaders, with meaningful influence over hiring priorities and how the company grows.
• Combine hands-on recruiting with the opportunity to shape a talent organization built around quality, speed, and strong candidate relationships.